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Samsung Expects Bendable Electronics With Graphene Breakthrough

Flexible electronics have always seemed like an unobtainable piece of science fiction, but Samsung announced today that it has developed a process which may speed the development of such devices. The key, apparently, is graphene.

Graphene has long been touted as the ideal replacement for silicon in electronic devices. It’s theoretically faster and more efficient, but a number of manufacturing obstacles have impeded its implementation. Samsung and partner Sungkyunkwan University’s School of Advanced Materials Science, believe they have overcome one barrier with a new method of growing wafer-sized, large-area graphene atop a semiconductor. Samsung says the process is an essential step toward making commercialization of graphene viable.

How does that translate to wearables? Unlike silicon, graphene is flexible, meaning future mobile motherboards could conform to a wide variety of shapes.

As soon as other components like batteries catch up to progress in the chip manufacturing industry, expect to see some awesome new products.

“This doesn’t mean that we’ll
suddenly see computer chips made out of graphene instead of silicon,
though — we still haven’t found a way of giving graphene a bandgap, which means
it’s actually fairly useless as far as digital computing goes.”

I would love to see rolled up phones that can flex so they are straight kinda of like what you see with those old snap bracelets when you make them non rolled.

tdurden64111

ITT: Everyone has a PhD in Grapheneology.

BenG

Seriously we might get bendable electronics but yet “scientists” still can come up with a legit penis enlargement pill, we need to get our priorities straight.

William Oh

What? ‘Legit Penis enlargement pills’ have nothing to do with hardware engineers. Those ‘scientists’ you’re referring to are called medical scientists and pharmaceutics and they deal with all that chemistry crap.

BenG

It was a joke, not to be taken literal.

Droidzilla

Graphene is exciting for its potential as a material for ultracapacitors, not for wearable tech. Just saying.

mh

Apple is just waiting for this to be developed so they can patent it.

Israel Ramirez

In 10 years, here comes graphene valley!

interstellarmind

The key here is battery tech.

Everything’s progressed by leaps and bounds: screens, chipsets, cameras, even speakers! Yet the only piece of hardware dragging its feet, still stuck in the OG Droid level of advancement, is the battery. Why is this?

I’m even willing to entertain conspiracy theories at this point!

calculatorwatch

I agree with your assessment but I also have no idea why battery tech is so behind.

If I had to guess I’d say it’s because lithium-ion battery tech has reached the maximum level of advancement. So we need an all-new revolutionary type of battery to go to the next level. It seems like we periodically hear about such “battery breakthroughs”, but I guess the cost always ends up being too high or the manufacturing too difficult to replace lithium-ion in consumer electronics.

Jordan Webb

The problem is the phone industry hasn’t been all that motivated…but Tesla is. They’ve got some serious advances in lithium-ion tech coming down the pipeline.

We’re not at the limits of Li-Ion batteries yet.

Kyle Wiggers

The best we can probably hope for is denser battery tech. Lithium-ion is here to stay, but if someone can figure out how to squeeze more cells into a smaller space, that’s when we’ll see big improvements.

Droidzilla

LiPo is really reaching (has already, in my opinion) diminishing returns. Graphene is teh shiznit for its potential to miniaturise ultracapacitors, and then battery tech will advance by an order of magnitude. It might even make EVs feasible instead of just super expensive go-karts.

calculatorwatch

Yeah I was looking up some super/ultracapacitor stuff and they’re pretty cool. It seems that the amount of charge isn’t quite as good as li-ion, but with the ability to recharge in seconds I wouldn’t mind having to charge a couple times a day.

Droidzilla

The amount of charge is tied to the distance between plates and the overall surface area by:
q=V*eps*A/d
Basically, the charge is equal to the voltage times a constant times the area divided by the distance between plates. So, the larger the surface area and the less the distance between plates, the greater charge that can be stored per unit of voltage. Graphene allows for much, much smaller ultracaps, so this greatly decreases the distance between plates and allows for an increase in surface area for the same unit volume (since they can be so small, basically).

This could put capacitor tech at a much higher advantage than current battery tech. Not to mention it would charge much faster, be lighter, very simple to manufacture (once tooling is brought up to speed), and doesn’t use the very environmentally unfriendly materials that batteries do. Oh, and it can’t blow up like LiPo can (though there are failsafes, LiPo would be more efficient if it could use it’s max potential; it can’t because of the explosion risk, among other things). Very exciting stuff; wearable tech is literally the last thing I’m excited about when it comes to graphene tech, in light of these facts.

TheSimpleTruth

The good thing about Graphene is it could also fix many of our battery problems. So if somehow Samsung does manage to fix the manufacturing woes, we could see an entirely new breed of electronics where battery life is not an issue. The future is going to be awesome…

Daeshaun Griffiths

i know this is step 1, but i want foldable. Like fold the note 3 into moto x size while keeping the pen foldable.

Grizzy

Nope! Samsung sucks… touchwiz is garbage.. i hate everything samsung.. i don’t care about details.. just NO

Cesar

Not sure if serious…

Grizzy

No, just beating all the haters to the punch cuz you know it’s coming.

The Narrator

Deep down you know it’s the truth. You aren’t beating anybody

Grizzy

Ya, obviously not.. Hence why I sold my moto x and went back to my S4. Would’ve made more money selling the S4, but would rather keep it since I actually like it a lot better.

calculatorwatch

I’m sorry, that’s considered blasphemy and you’re officially excommunicated from Droid Life.

Grizzy

My account’s going to get banned soon.

tdurden64111

RIP in Peace. And Touchwiz is absolutely awful. Asians are great at technical skills, but design isn’t their strong suit (please don’t quote something built 2000+ years ago).

Dominick White

HTC one/LG G2 ?

William Oh

RIP means Rest in peace.

Dominick White

I always hated TouchWiz (because way too colorful) but after using my wifes Note 3 it isn’t as bad as I thought. Plus I like how they have done with their notification area, so much better than the ones on HTC devices running 4.2.2 – 4.4.2

hot_spare

Just imagine if google or Apple did the same, there is be tons of people claiming how innovative the company is. Just because it’s Samsung, people will hardly notice it.

PS. I have even heard people claiming N4 takes better photos than GS4 because it runs on pure Google software.

Grizzy

Ya, people are funny.

WickedToby741

Samsung is a wonderful hardware innovator and frequently has the best hardware in the business, but their design and software skills are lacking.

Maxim∑

I hope your excluding Samsungs crap Exynos processors

William Oh

How is it crap? Samsung doesn’t even ‘expertise’ or invest as much as Qualquomm does into their snapdragon and they have very reliable performance and still growing. Samsung makes very high quality hardware, excluding their digital cams as Sony is just on top with that category. Regardless, I can’t seem to understand why people smite Samsung for their use of polycarbonate, since when has metal been so desirable in smartphones? I happen to prefer plastic over metal as long as it’s light, screen is well constructed, and functions exceptionally well.

hot_spare

Not too bad, is it??

morteum

Maybe on this website. Samsung is the leading Android manufacturer, so some people obviously think their products are good.

ILikeAndroid

You just summed up the opinions of everyone hating on Samsung for no reason in one sentence. You get an upvote.

Ali Bazzi

Good one! You forgot to add “Verizon sucks”. I doesn’t take long for that to show up.

BenG

But seriously they do suck, well other than their coverage area which is why I’ll probably be vzw4life.

Grizzy

You’re right, I missed that one.

npompei

Oh boy, you can bet Apple patented the word “bendable” with their “floppy” drives back in the day. This won’t fly in court…
In all seriousness, this is great and inevitable. But like you said, it takes everything else to catch up too (batteries, etc.) So while it may happen in this sector first, we are still years away from Apple claiming they invented flex.

Walter Partlo

Yay materials science!

The Narrator

S Bend

michael arazan

Carbon nano tubes are very flexible, also very toxic to humans too.

Ray

I Watched Jobs yesterday man that dude was angry

Good_Ole_Pinocchio

Cross, Angry, Miserable.

BenG

Don’t talk that way about the Jesus of Computing. You must not know computers wouldn’t exist without him.

The Narrator

You mean without his “team” . He didn’t know jack shyt without them.

BenG

Yeah my comment was pure sarcasm.

mcdonsco

Plus one sir…so true.

And usually you annoy me

The Narrator

Jobs was a dickhole who screwed everybody over.

mcdonsco

Very much an ahole

Dave

Bring it on!

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